


let’s leave a mark (‘cause light shines brighter in the dark)

by HappyCamper27



Series: The Plot Bunny Kennel [1]
Category: Belgariad/Malloreon Series - David & Leigh Eddings, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Incomplete, May Or May Not Be Continued, this is rly just a plot bunny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 05:20:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9057244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HappyCamper27/pseuds/HappyCamper27
Summary: In which Harry has magic--but he's not a wizard, or a (third-rate) magician.





	

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from 'Untraveled Road' by Thousand Foot Krutch

Harry Potter wasn’t a normal person. He was different, odd. His relatives had pounded this into his head since he was young. They made no secret of the fact that they hated him, and saw him as little more than a burden. Often times, they made him do the chores around the house, cooking and gardening, even vacuuming since he was tall enough now.

One of the first hints that they were right was when he was seven. He was alone in his cupboard, and his head was pounding horribly from where his Aunt had hit him with a hot frying pan. He wanted nothing more than for the pain to go away, and he felt an odd…gathering sensation. Then, as he whimpered, a strange _rush_ sounded in his ears, and the pain faded. He fell asleep not long afterwards, oddly exhausted.

The next came when he was eleven. His Uncle had been furious with him because of the letters that had been plaguing the Dursleys, and had shouted at him, yelling and striking him. As he cried out and curled up, he, again, felt that _gathering_ sensation, followed by the _rushing_.

His Uncle had stopped, seeming confused, and had stumbled away from him, leaving him whimpering in agony on the floor. Aunt Petunia had curled her lip at him before shoving him into his cupboard.

They had left Privet Drive the next day, fleeing far away, until they reached a little, decrepit shack on a tiny island in the middle of a storm. Harry had gotten the thinnest, most threadbare blanket and had been left on the floor, with Dudley snoring loudly beside him on the couch. He had been counting down to midnight, to the very first minutes of his birthday, when the sound came—right at the stroke of midnight.

Then Hagrid had come, with his warmth and fire and strength, and had said those incredible words:

“Ye’re a wizard, ‘Arry.”

And, for a while, Harry thought that he knew why everything was odd about him.

\---

The Wizarding World was _incredible_. Harry felt safe, for the first time in a long time—perhaps ever. He wasn’t alone, he wasn’t a freak like his Aunt and Uncle had said. There was an explanation, a reason.

He had gawked at the colors and sounds and _magic_ of Diagon Alley; he had sat eagerly on the Hogwarts Express; he had been absolutely enchanted by the sight of Hogwarts, all light and magic and ghosts and _freedom_.

He had a new friend, and maybe a new enemy. He had a place in the world, and there were people like him. He wasn’t alone, _finally_.

Later that night, he lay in his bed, surrounded by red and gold, and felt a pang of longing for his cupboard, for the tinge of familiarity and safety the dark, enclosed space brought. Then, he reassured himself that this was a beginning, a beginning of something great and amazing, that he would never have to return to his cupboard, that when he went back to his relatives—for it wasn’t his home, _never his home_ —he could laugh in the face of their fear, of their taunts. He wasn’t a freak, and he wasn’t alone.

Not ever again.

\---

He had been wrong—he had been _so very wrong_. He had thought that these people, these amazing incredible people, would be different, would be _like him_. He had been wrong.

They were just as cruel and narrow-minded as the Dursleys had been, but in different ways. The Slytherins and purebloods seemed to hate those who didn’t have magic, and looked down upon those who came from non-magical families, while the Gryffindors and the rest of the Wizarding world looked at the Slytherins and snarled of _dark magic_ , and _evil, slimy snakes_.

The supposedly ‘Dark’ magicals sneered at the ‘Light’ magicals and non-magicals, and the Light magicals sneered at the ‘Dark’ magicals and suppressed them cruelly, pushing the magical creatures down with them.

Their words were cruel and harsh, and Harry just couldn’t bring himself to speak out against them. He hadn’t been able to speak out against the Dursleys’ bigotry, and now he couldn’t speak out against the Wizarding World’s bigotry. He just didn’t understand.

And not only were they bigoted, and narrow minded, but they refused to accept that he might be something outside of their expectations. They were bound and determined that he would be their perfect little savior, that he was an incredible wizard who would always ally himself with the ‘Light’.

They were so determined for him to be their golden child, that they didn’t see the _true_ him, just like the Dursleys. They refused to accept anything that didn’t fit into _their worldview_.

The more he thought about it, the more he saw their similarities, their likeness to each other. But, just as he had with the Dursleys, he couldn’t find it in himself to speak out against it, to force them to change their views. Instead, he let them believe what they would, and fit _himself_ into their views.

He didn’t want any trouble, and he knew that nothing but fury would come of fighting; they would outcast him, and would _force_ him into the role they had created for him if he fought.

So he played along, all the while with the compounded knowledge that he was, well and truly, _alone_.

\---

The end of the year brought pain and fear and fire. He had chased after Quirrel—after all, why would Snape chase after the Sorcerer’s Stone? He clearly had very little use for it, and Quirrel’s had struck him as…off, since the beginning of the year—and had ended up facing off against the killer, the _murderer_ , of his parents.

He had fought, and had reviled the man who was so very pitiful and ruthless.

And then Quirrel had grasped him by the throat, and had snarled and began to crush his windpipe. He had, once again, felt the _gathering_ , and he had put his hands to Quirrel’s face and had said a single word.

“Burn!” he had shouted, and the force had _rushed_ forward. The man had sneered at him, before a strange sort of realization flickered over his face.

“It burns, Master, it _burns_!” he had shrieked, but the harsh, raspy voice of Voldemort had been relentless.

“Get the Stone, you fool!” it had yelled, and Quirrel had lunged for Harry once more, even as his face had begun to smoke and writhe. Harry had scrambled back, and had avoided the man, desperately fighting his way free of the man, who was _burning_ , _burning_ horribly, from the _inside_.

Soon, Quirrel had fallen, screaming and contorting as he burned. Harry had felt sick, but he had not turned away. He couldn’t.

And then, once the man had turned to smoking, foul ash, the wraith of Voldemort had risen from the body, and swept through him, and Harry had fallen over, blackness rising behind his eyes as a foul sort of uncleanness swept through him.

When he woke, Dumbledore had told him that it had been his mother’s love that had burned Quirrel, but he knew better.

_He_ had burned him, _he_ had set fire to the man. _He_ had let Quirrel scream and writhe, begging for mercy, and had let him _burn_.

_He had killed him_.

But he couldn’t quite bring himself to regret it.

\---

The summer brought pain. He had almost begged Dumbledore to let him stay at the castle, _anywhere_ but _the Dursleys’_.

He hadn’t listened. He had cited protection and blood wards and familial love, but Harry knew better. There was no love lost between him and the Dursleys—they hated him, and he hated them. Harry knew that returning that summer would be one of the most horrible things he’d ever had to do. But then he read the slip that said, “please inform your families that underage magic during the summer is not allowed”, and a tiny glimmer of hope had swelled in his chest.

If he could hide the fact that he wasn’t allowed to do magic from them, then there was a possibility that he’d get through the summer with little more than a few bruises, instead of the possible broken bones that his Uncle might feel compelled to inflict upon him.

In the end, it was a foolish hope.

Dobby had come, and the Dursleys had found out that he wasn’t allowed to use magic outside of school. They had locked him into his new bedroom, barely letting him out of it for a total of fifteen minutes a day, with three meals that barely counted as such. And then had come his Uncle, after long nights of drinking; his breath was always hot and stinking of alcohol, and he slurred his insults and ravings as he inflicted white hot pain.

Then, the next morning, Aunt Petunia would purse her lips at him as she passed him his meager breakfast and sometimes, when he went out to use the facilities, she would cuff him harshly around the head, snarling out cruel insults and slurs, her eyes like chips of icy hatred.

Dudley, thankfully, avoided him. It didn’t do too much, in the end.

He felt the _gathering_ and the _rushing_ a great deal that summer, often whispering the words that came to him in the dead of night, leaving him exhausted as he healed slowly.

\---

Returning for his Second Year was…exciting, to say the least. First, the Weasleys—Ron, and his twin older brothers, Fred and George—had come to rescue him, sweeping him away from his relatives in a magical flying car and to their home, an incredible, homely place called the Burrow. He had stayed there for the rest of the summer, and had laughed and grinned with them, had eaten the amazing—if rather rich—food that Mrs. Weasley had prepared.

It had been heaven.

And then had come the time to leave for Hogwarts; Harry had been looking forward to boarding the Hogwarts Express once more, but the wall that separated the non-magical side of King’s Cross and the magical side of Platform 9 and ¾ had been solid and real, leaving both him and Ron stranded.

He had pondered just waiting there—for surely they wouldn’t let a student be left behind, right? One of the professors would surely come to get them if they didn’t show up—but Ron had talked about his family’s magical flying car, and how they could use it to get to Hogwarts.

And, once again, Harry just couldn’t find it in himself to argue. What was the point? All it would do was lose him a friend, one of his _only_ friends, _ever_.

And so, they had flown to Hogwarts in a bumpy, rusty old car that ended up crash landing them into one of the most violent trees Harry had ever encountered.

And then had come the threat of expulsion, of never being allowed back at Hogwarts and being sentenced back to the Dursleys’.

Harry had never been more thankful for Professor Dumbledore’s intervention.

\---

He had expected a quiet year, had hoped for peace and quiet and maybe a chance to settle into the odd new world he had been thrown into.

He didn’t get it.

First of all, the Defense Professor was an idiot—who let the guy teach, honestly?—and he was constantly dragging Harry along, giving him ‘tips’ for his fame, and pulling him into his idiotic little re-enactment scenes for DADA, even though Harry _never_ volunteered. He was tempted, more than once, to _truly_ act out the part of a feral werewolf, or an enraged banshee, and take the opportunity to get the fool to shut up and leave him alone.

But all he’d get out of it would be a detention and Hermione scolding him. She was ridiculous, sighing and mooning after the idiot. It confused him.

And then came Halloween; he had been on his way back to Gryffindor Tower after a ‘detention’ with Lockhart, _answering his fanmail_ , when he had heard it. A voice, hidden within the walls, whispering and snarling of _rip, tear, kill, come to me my sweet, let me feed, hungry, so hungry_ ad he had followed onto the second floor only to be greeted with water and a petrified cat.

Then had come the rest of the students, and Malfoy’s fiercely gleeful words.

“You’re next, Mudbloods!”

The worst part had been the Dueling Club. Lockhart had pitted him, foolishly, against Malfoy, and the blond twit yelled out a spell that Harry honestly didn’t recognize.

“ _Serpensortia_!” a snake, hissing furiously, shot from the tip of Malfoy’s wand. It snarled, turning this way and that, baring it’s fangs.

“ _Stupid two-legs_ ,” it snarled. “ _I was sleeping! Where am I?”_ the students cringed back. “ _Oh yes, fear me, you stupid humans_!” Snape stepped forward, raising his wand.

“I will deal with it,” he drawled, but the snake, agitated by the action, turned on one of the Hufflepuffs, who drew back as it hissed angrily.

“ _I’ll bite, move away, foolish apes,_ ” it hissed viciously.

“ _No, don’t! You’re safe,_ ” Harry couldn’t help but call out, stepping forward. The snake turned sharply, and Harry knelt down a bit. “ _Don’t bite, they won’t hurt you_.”

“ _A speaker? Why is one of the most noble here, in this place_?”

The rest of the students were stepping away, looking on in horror, but Harry kept murmuring to the snake.

“ _I’m a student here,”_ he said. _“You can’t bite the other students, or you’ll be hurt_.”

The snake flicked its tongue lightly, tasting the air.

“ _Very well, speaker, this one shall do a—”_

There was a hiss of fire, and the snake nearly howled as it was consumed by fire, turning to ash in mere seconds.

“What’re you on about?!” shrieked the Hufflepuff, and Harry blinked. “Trying to set it on me, were you?!”

“No, I—”

But it was too late. The bigotry had already turned them against him, and they whispered his name, staring after him coldly as they murmured. The Hufflepuffs were horrible that year, often times pushing or shoving him, and the older Hufflepuffs would even jinx or hex him in the corridors, leaving him to act like nothing was wrong even as he desperately tried to conceal whatever they had done to him.

The Ravenclaws just looked on, sneering and whispering behind their hands, looking down upon him for a talent he had never even known he had, muttering darkly to each other about _dark magic_.

The Slytherins were the same as always, laughing and taunting, and Harry almost wanted to kiss them for the normality, the way that they hadn’t changed in their treatment of him.

But it was the Gryffindors that hurt the most. They pushed him around, outcasted him much the same way they had outcasted Hermione in first year—if it hadn’t been for the Quidditch team being who they were, he had no doubt he would have been asked to leave the team. Ron was wary around him, watching him with scared eyes and cruel words waiting; Hermione was fascinated, but also constantly telling him that he couldn’t go _dark_ , that he should talk to Dumbledore and see if there was a way to have it removed.

In the end, Harry couldn’t do anything but keep a stiff upper lip, refusing to react. To react was to show that they had gotten to you, and to show that was to show weakness—and they would _pounce_ on any ounce of weakness, using it to rip him apart limb from limb and shred his heart, small and shriveled as it probably was, into a million pieces.

And then came the end of the year, with Tom and the Basilisk, and Fawkes and Ginny, and the poison running rife through his veins.

He had lain there, and had been so ready, so _very ready_ to just let the poison run its course, to let it claim him and drag him into Death’s chill embrace, the embrace he had been courting for years now. The poison had felt like numbing fire, so very hot and yet so very cold, ripping through him.

And then Fawkes had stood there in front of him, crying and so majestic, and the numbing hot-cold of the venom was met by a hot-cold that rippled through his veins, fighting and turning the numbness into hot prickling wakefulness, and he nearly bit his tongue as the Phoenix Tears raged against the Basilisk Venom. It hurt, it hurt, it _hurt_ , but he still managed to get Ginny up to safety, to free Dobby, and to collapse into his bed, curling up and hoping the agony would be gone by the time he woke up.

It wasn’t, and he woke to find everyone tripping over themselves to wait on him hand and foot, but not saying a word about how they had acted, how they had turned on him. And perhaps, before, he might have forgiven them, forgiven them like he had forgiven the Dursleys once upon a time. But right then, all he could feel was anger, a raging, furious anger that they thought that he was so naïve as to willingly let them back in, to forgive them.

That was the first time that Harry, instead of just giving in, resisted. He let them act as though they were his friends, but he never forgave them, never forgot. He held their betrayal close to his heart, and bit his tongue.

He was, in the end, just as alone as he had always been; surrounded by liars and cheats and sycophants and abusers, just as he had been before he had discovered magic.

Sometimes he wondered whether magic was worth it.

\---

That summer was horrible. The Dursleys had nothing holding them back, and his Uncle was more furious than usual, blaming the fact that he’d been demoted at work on Harry—who had been at Hogwarts at the time, and barely knew anything about his Uncle’s work.

The meals were smaller, and he was grateful he had released Hedwig and sent her to Hermione’s for the summer—doubtless his precious companion would be stick-thin and bony, eyes dull and exhausted, had she stayed with him.

Yes, it was for the best. But it didn’t mean that he didn’t miss her company, of her soft churrs and hoots when he desperately needed the affection of another living thing.

And then his Aunt Marge came, and he ended up losing his temper, already so fragile from days of starvation and being worked to the bone. He had blown her up, inflated her like a balloon, and had _run_.

He shuddered to think what would’ve happened if he hadn’t run, if he hadn’t turned his back on the Dursleys and fled to Diagon Alley. His Uncle had been furious, and would have undoubtedly turned that rage onto his own nephew with a vicious glee, extracting his vengeance in pain and screams.

Even as he sat on his bed in the Leaky Cauldron, Harry couldn’t help but wonder about the quiet numbness that had snuck into his chest. He had almost wanted to fight back against Fudge, say that he would go wherever he pleased, but had held back. After all, fighting and arguing would only bring pain, and he had had enough of that for one summer.

But he had wanted to, had felt the urge to battle and fight, and for one moment he wondered if he might even fight against all those who were constantly stuffing him into their little boxes, making _him_ fit to _their_ expectations.

It both scared him and exhilarated him.

\---

Third Year was the first time that Harry deliberately tried to call up the _gathering_ , to collect that power and release it.

He was curious about that power, about the _gathering_ and the _rushing_ and the exhaustion that followed. He had searched the castle for answers, and had come upon a secret hidden within the very castle itself.

There was a secret room, hidden on the seventh floor, and when he paced by it, desperately wanting a place where he could learn more about his strange power, the door had appeared.

It was there, among the books that the room provided, that he learned what the power was. The books called it sorcery, and spoke of the roaring he heard when he used it, of the incredible feats that were possible. They spoke of how, once, there had been sorcerers that walked among them, but slowly they died out, until there were none left. Some had decided to go quietly, to fade away into Death, and others had fought and struggled, refusing to go until the very last second.

It left him both uplifted and disheartened. Uplifted, because he finally knew what it was, and that he wasn’t some anomalous _freak_. Disheartened, because while there had been others like him, he was the only one. The only one, alone in a world where sorcerers were gone and looked down upon as black magic users of the darkest kind.

It was in those moments that he felt his caring, his ability to care about the Wizarding World’s bigotry and prejudices, fracture, like so much glass held together by a frame of sanity and emotions.

**Author's Note:**

> This is honestly a plot bunny i was working on earlier in the year that ended up tossed to the wayside; it may or may not be completed, but...I figured I'd post _something_ today. Merry Christmas (if you celebrate it), Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year y'all.


End file.
